


Living By the Rules

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:40:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27874721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Jim has always lived by rules
Kudos: 7





	Living By the Rules

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Thursday prompt 'rules'

Living By the Rules

by Bluewolf

Even when his mother was still there, Jim had been raised to understand the importance of obeying the rules laid down by his parents - or, more specifically, his father. Break one and he was grounded, locked on a small room that seemed to have been kept for that sole purpose, to provide somewhere to punish him... or Stephen. Shut in his own room, he would have had access to a window to give him something to look at; or, as he got older, books. This room had nothing, not even a chair... or a window, only a dim light. There was nothing to do in it apart from sit on the floor and think about what he had done wrong. When his mother left, he realized that she had been responsible for the rules being what his father considered lax.

After he went to school, it was the rules laid down by the school authorities that had to be obeyed. The punishment for infringing them was less stringent, certainly - but he had decided, by the time he was old enough to go to school, that his father's rules were now probably the most inflexible in the entire world. There was no excuse that he could offer that would excuse breaking one of them. He might have been given grudging semi-approval if he had stepped off the sidewalk to help someone knocked down by a car, but then he would still have been punished for stepping off the sidewalk unless he needed to cross the road - at a designated crossing place, of course.

Joining the army gave him a new set of rules to follow (and, because of being promoted, enforce).

Rules. He had followed rules for all of his life. It was therefore automatic for him to formulate a personal set of rules to follow once he returned to civilian life and joined the police - and yes, the police had rules too! Even for the detectives.

The only place where the rules weren't already laid out for him was his home. And so, without actually sitting down and writing anything down, he formulated a set of rules for himself - rules that, without thinking about them, would give him a trouble-free life when he was at home.

A place for everything, and everything in its place - so he would know where to find anything without having to search.

One slight disadvantage to his loft apartment was that it was a converted warehouse, and he was aware of the pipes rattling, especially when he flushed the toilet. So - no flushing the toilet if he had to get up during the night.

Leftover food in the fridge? The different Tupperware containers had different colors of lids... so maybe one color for food that was a day old, a different color for food that was two days old? He doubted he would ever use food older than that - it usually said on the cans that once opened the contents should be eaten within three days. Though a third color might be useful for if he froze some of the contents. Some bought chilled meals were really too much for one meal but because most were suitable for home freezing, eating half and freezing half was an option.

Yes - those house rules would certainly make life easier...

***

Maybe. When he found himself with a housemate, he discovered that not everyone lived by rules. Blair, he found, never seemed to do the same thing twice in the same way... ever. How the younger man had ever found the self-discipline to sit and actually study, rather than amass information by osmosis, Jim couldn't quite understand. He could only be grateful that Blair obeyed most of his house rules without too much argument, apparently accepting that adherence to them meant less trouble for his sentinel's senses.

Because Blair, Jim realized, would do whatever it took to make life as unstressful for his sentinel as it was possible to be.


End file.
